Charlotte, N.C. ? President Bush swept through three Southern states Thursday for Republican candidates who hope to capitalize on his tough-on-terrorism popularity while linking their Democratic rivals to the Clinton administration largely unpopular in this region.

Though Bush did not mention the former president as he rallied Republican voters in the Carolinas and Alabama, his 12-hour campaign blitz was designed to reinforce the strategy of southern GOP candidates: Portray their Democratic opponents as tax-raising liberals who are out of step with the region’s conservative voters.

“We’re coming down the stretch. Candidates can’t win without you,” the president told a partisan crowd of several thousand voters while campaigning for Senate candidate Elizabeth Dole.

Bush urged Republicans to lobby Democrats and independents for their support: “Turn them out to vote.”

Bush’s trip reflects a shift in congressional battlegrounds that could favor Republicans in the South. While suburban districts were central to the last few congressional campaigns, rural America became this year’s focal point because of GOP retirements and the creation of several large rural districts after the 2000 Census.

Southern Democrats, particularly whites, began migrating to the Republican Party in the 1960s. The trend continued into the 1990s, when President Clinton’s support for gays in the military, gun control and a national health care system played poorly in the South.

Hoping to reverse the trend, Democratic leaders recruited candidates who wander from the party’s positions on gun control, abortion, taxes and national security.

Bush, as if in response, denounced Democrats for opposing his tax cuts and plans to create a Department of Homeland Security. He said the Democratic-run Senate had done a “lousy job” seating federal judges.

“For the sake of a sound judiciary, we need to change the leadership in the United States Senate,” the president said during an evening stop in Alabama.

President Bush is making use of his high approval ratings and hitting the road to campaign for other Republicans as the Nov. 5 election nears. Thursday he spoke at a rally for Senate candidate Lindsay Graham in Columbia, S.C.